


Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Dark and Stormy Night, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Nuns, Rain, Romance, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7367533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night falls early in late November and Jed is anxious for Mary's return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around

By half past six, Jed had given up pretending he was doing anything else but waiting for Mary. She had gone out in the middle of the afternoon, at least, that is what an orderly had finally told him when he had gone looking for her. He would have been operating on Corporal Potter then, assisted by Anne Hastings, who had blessedly kept quiet for most of it. She’d finally learned that he didn’t care for her casually cruel gossip or her incomprehensible nostalgia for the Crimea, which she described as a Dante-esque level of Hell composed in equal parts of lice, dysentery and men spoiling from gangrene like butcher’s offal. Potter’s injury had been extensive but fairly easily repaired and Jed had almost enjoyed the procedure. He had let Anne finish the final stitches, which sweetened her temper; he suspected she was a frustrated surgeon at heart but so few women managed to navigate the rough waters of medicine and he didn’t think she had the right balance of diligence, intellect and self-effacement to achieve it. Anne must make do with the bits and pieces he could dole out to her. Hale never let her close, she’d mentioned once in between canards and a spiteful inventory of Mary’s perceived short-comings and Jed had not been surprised to learn that Hale monopolized his surgeries as he tried to monopolize every conversation. The man had the spirit of a prize boar without half as much wit.

He’d amused himself with the jest even if he’d not spoken it aloud. His audience was limited; Henry retreated to the solemnity of his chaplaincy with the young man’s fear of being found callow and Mary’s first instinct was always towards a compassionate acceptance, though he knew Hale was not a favorite of hers. He appreciated McBurney’s professionalism in light of Hale and Summers’s glaring deficits and so kept himself very correct and formal with the man, unless they found a way to turn the conversation to his ongoing chess matches with Hopkins, in which McBurney took a lively interest. He thought soon enough McBurney would be willing to sit with them of an evening and perhaps enjoy a little of the French brandy Jed saved for the colder nights, a gift from Jules in the last crate of journals and finely made surgical instruments. 

Jed had made his afternoon rounds alone. The wards were relatively quiet as the dank drizzle that had filled the morning turned imperceptibly into a cold rain. The roads would run with it, the dust a slow muddy river. The clouds seemed to hold a limitless number of raindrops, all of which wanted to smack against the windows of Mansion House before they fell to earth. The orderlies had had to light the lamps early but the sound of the rain lulled the men into compliance and no one complained that the supper was served in meager portions and the bread was hard. Jed hadn’t asked about Mary, not for some time; he had assumed she was in the other ward, or her little kitchen, industriously working at some task which would deliver more than it promised. The meal was so poor, Jed thought she might have made cakes for the boys to serve with the chicory that passed for coffee; she kept the sack of coffee beans locked away now and saved it for the officers’ Sunday dinner. Hale, of course, had complained bitterly the first Monday he was not served hot coffee at every meal, but he’d settled down after McBurney had, for once, glared at him and now they all savored their after-dinner coffee after Hopkins’s sermon and drank the chicory or chamomile Mary would spare the rest of the time.

Supper was served in the officers’ dining room and she wasn’t there. It was full night now, the early night of November rushing heedlessly toward the solstice, and he ate what was on his plate with dispatch but little enjoyment. He had started to ask where she was, who had seen her—first Henry, who only remembered seeing her in the morning with Emma Green, the prettiest tête–à–tête that Mansion House could witness, then McBurney, who mentioned errands vaguely. No one seemed unduly concerned but still the rain fell and the air was chilled in the high-ceilinged rooms. It was Samuel Diggs who knew anything about her whereabouts, commenting that Mr. MacMillan had handed her her basket near three o’clock. He said she’d talked about some herbal remedies a local woman was said to make up, that the general store had gotten a new shipment in and she’d made a few oblique remarks “about special occasions and confectionary, Dr. Foster, I didn’t like to ask.” Christmas was approaching, some weeks away that would fly, but Jed’s own birthday was in early December and he knew she knew it too. It was preferable to think she was lingering in the humid warmth of the general store, looking at squat jars of boiled sweets, sheets of ribbons candy or a tall flute of lemon humbugs, glossy and brighter than amber.

For Mary had gone out alone in an occupied city on a late autumn day and now it was dark, rain unrelenting, less than a storm but only just. Henry had admitted Miss Green had been escorted home hours earlier by a boy sent from her home, her concerned parents unwilling to let her walk even the few blocks unaccompanied, “and I’d never seen such an enormous umbrella, Foster, not trimmed with pink ribbon and a half-dozen rosettes.”

It must have shown on his face, his worry and the belligerence he would cloak it in, for neither Anne nor Hale said much to him or about Mary. Henry settled on the sofa where they were used to sitting after the meal but did not try to engage him. He only meditatively smoked his pipe and leafed through a book Jed had lent him, Dryden or Carlyle, some volume Jed hadn’t realized hadn’t made the trip to California. Hale and Hastings, McBurney and Summers all retreated to their rooms though McBurney did say “let me know when she arrives back, just knock, I like to know everyone’s accounted for, especially on a foul night like this,” and his tone was amiable but serious. He was finally the chief medical officer the hospital deserved, but Jed hardly spared him a nod.

Jed tried to occupy himself with a book, the day old newspaper he found on a side table, even a medical journal he’d tucked in his coat pocket in the morning when he’d imagined sitting in the armchair across from Henry and Mary busy with a letter or some needlework in the little alcove she preferred. Nothing held his interest. Every creak of the house made him turn; he looked up at sound of any footstep, though he knew that was Matron, and that Samuel, tired and deliberate, the lighter sound of Sister Isabella hushed by her habit. He stood, he paced, he peered through black windows, through the rain’s sinuous runnels. Henry looked at him from time to time, finally suggesting “perhaps you’ll feel better in the front hall, she’s sure to come in there and she may have packages that need to be dealt with, someone to help pay the carriage driver?” Jed nodded, appreciating Henry’s considerate phrasing and the picture he’d invoked of Mary simply laden down with purchases, trying to avoid getting her skirts muddy as she stepped out of a hired landau.

He was sitting on the oak bench in the front hall, his head down and back bent, close to praying or running up to McBurney and insisting they go look for her, when the great mahogany front door opened and Mary came in. Her basket was on her arm and there was no carriage visible from the street; it seemed highly unlikely she had been in any vehicle, for she was wet through, her bonnet ribbons flattened against her shawl. Her face looked very white within the darkened brim of her bonnet and as he walked up to her, he saw that she was only wearing a black shawl against the weather. The hem of her skirt was filthy.

“Christ! Mary, where in Heaven’s name have you been? Have you any idea of the time?” he burst out, all his fear for her metamorphosed to anger, as if a pale caterpillar had emerged from its chrysalis a hissing viper.

“It’s late, I know, I hope you haven’t been waiting for me for your supper,” she replied. She sounded very tired and she fumbled with the full basket, setting it beside her, then making an effort to pull off her sodden gloves.

“Waiting for you? I didn’t have any idea where you were, I still don’t know, you shouldn’t go out alone like this, and, and, you’re not even wearing your coat!” He reached out to touch the fringe on the shawl and felt the weight of the wet wool. She shrugged a little to let the shawl slip off but he had reached out already. He’d put his hands on her slender shoulders, stroked down the sides of her arms to pull away the wrap. She hardly seemed to breathe. He held it for a minute, then let it drop onto the wooden bench. The bodice of her dress was mottled with the rain, her lace collar limp.

“Jedediah, really, it’s only a little rain,” she began. She moved to untie the ribbons at her throat and struggled a little, the silk resisting her.

“Why aren’t you wearing your coat, Mary? You can’t have thought your shawl would be enough, it was cold even before the rain started, you mustn’t be so heedless of yourself,” Jed exclaimed. He wanted to be in a warm parlor with her, a fire brisk and merry in the hearth, fresh tea ready for her in its brown betty, but they stood in a hallway of grey light, the vitality of the wood bench and the floors muted by the night. Perhaps before the War, Mansion House might have been snug against a night like this, but not now, not with the supplies needing to stretch so far and with so little to spare; now it provided shelter but with a grudging welcome, save what Mary strove so hard to provide.

“I haven’t got one,” she replied, still battling the bonnet. Her movements were slowed, not clumsy, but without her usual grace.

“What do you mean, you haven’t got one?” he asked. 

“I gave it away to Mrs. Schuyler… she hadn’t anything more than a shawl with her,” she said as if naturally anyone would do the same. 

“You gave your coat away,” Jed repeated evenly.

“You must remember her, she came from Iowa and her husband was Private Schuyler, well, perhaps you don’t recall, I think Dr. Hale may have operated on him… she was so young, barely twenty, and, and, he died, her husband died just after she arrived. She is… with child and all she had was a shawl. She wouldn’t stop shivering. She couldn’t travel back that way, Jed, and I hardly ever leave Mansion House-- she needed it more than I did. It was a mercy it fit. I’ve written my sister Caroline, she’ll send me another, or one of hers she doesn’t need, but that’s why, that’s why I haven’t got a coat,” Mary explained. He was thinking, how good she is, how kind and generous and infuriatingly unconcerned with herself when she started coughing.

She reached into the reticule at her wrist and brought out a crumpled handkerchief, held it to her mouth. Jed realized he recognized the sound, the deep wet grind of it, the effort she was making to clear her lungs, and yet to mute herself. She didn’t wish to inconvenience anyone. He’d heard it, that racked noise, this morning from across the hall, and the day before as well. It had punctuated the whole afternoon, irritating him while he tried to close the laceration by Private Granger’s left eye, and he’d dropped his scalpel and tenaculum into the tray roughly, making the orderly jump. It had been Mary coughing and she was ill then, ill and still wearing wet clothes and he was interrogating her in a hallway.

“Mary, please, sit down. You needn’t stand there, only just sit down a moment and let me help you,” he said. It was a measure of how fatigued she was that she acquiesced without any discussion. She coughed again into the handkerchief and he bent down, finished untying the ribbons of her bonnet and took it from her. He needed to see her face—her eyes were a little glassy and he couldn’t tell if her brow was damp with a breaking fever or the rain. He took her wrist in his hand, to check her pulse—it was rapid but steady. She was so pale, except for the high color on her cheeks, almost like a china doll boldly painted, red and white and black for smoothly parted hair. She coughed again, less able to control the wrenching sound or muffle the plosion as she spat into the handkerchief. He considered how she drove herself, how little sleep she got, how she always served herself the smallest portion at meals and a terrible thought occurred; he felt the cold steel of a bayonet in his gut.

“Mary, you must tell me, is there blood? When you cough, is there blood in the handkerchief?” Jed asked and this time he could not conceal his fear for her as anything else. If she were bringing up blood, he would have to face it-- the odds were great that she had consumption and there would be nothing for it but to send her away, to pray a mountain sanatorium’s fresh air and wholesome food would be enough. It rarely was, it would be a death sentence and they would both know it. 

“No, Jedediah, no. It’s only a catarrh, oh, don’t worry yourself so, my lo--, I’m only a little tired and this cough has been plaguing me a bit, it’s nothing to distress yourself over. I just spent too long at my errands and then the rain,” she said. Her voice was very gentle and he thought she would not lie to him, not about this, but the physician in him persisted in taking her history. He scanned her face, her dear, sweet face, and recognized her desire to console him and the way she tried to push her own discomfort aside. She shook a little with a cough she tried to suppress and he saw how she winced.

“Have you had fevers? Sweats in the night? You are so flushed now, Mary, tell me,” he insisted.

“No, or, only a little fever, nothing troublesome, it’s just the cough that wakes me. We haven’t any honey to spare and I couldn’t raise any elecampane or licorice in the garden,” Mary replied. She was reassuring him, but her color was still high, the blood staining her cheeks a rich pink.

“But you are so flushed,” he said, unable to shake the dread. To have to send her away, to know even that would likely not be enough…

“You are-- Jedediah, you are still holding my hand,” she said and then she blushed even more, not only her cheeks but a soft rose that suffused her whole face. He hadn’t thought to see that in her, the young girl she had once been, not the practical Head Nurse, the learned Baroness. He let her go, reluctantly; he only wanted to hold her closer, to take down her damp hair, unbutton the collar of her dress. He wanted to let his fingers rest on her white throat and feel her pulse beat beneath his fingertips, watch her lips part. She coughed again, more weakly, and it resumed the contours of a simple catarrh in an otherwise healthy young woman.

“We need to get you to bed, out of those wet things,” he said. She looked down and turned away from him a little, suddenly shy at the words he’d said, “we” and “bed” too closely linked.

“And you need something hot, tea and broth, and I think, help getting ready…” Here he trailed off, knowing that what he had almost said but discarded, “undressed” or “into your nightclothes” would cross a line. He had already crossed so many tonight but there were choices which could not be unmade and it was unfair to her, she was unwell and exhausted.

“Oh no, I don’t need any help, I just need to put away the things in the basket first,” she said but she interrupted herself with another convulsive cough and the hand she laid on the bench to steady herself trembled.

“But you do need help, Mary, and someone else can deal with restocking the kitchen or the medicine cabinet or deal with whatever you have tucked away in the basket—it won’t be you though, that I can’t allow,” he replied. Jed looked down the hallway, yes, there was the grey skirt and the white coif he wondered at every day, how she kept it so crisply clean. He could see the round curve of her cheek and called, “Sister Isabella! Please, come over here.”

The little nun scurried over, only her habit dispelling the vision of her as a housemaid or a young cousin come to visit for a few months. He could hear the echo of his mother’s voice calling “Ladies do not run up and down the stairs!” to his own cousin Delia; she’d looked a little like Isabella, always put him in mind of an ripe apricot with her round cheeks and pointed chin, her bright hair streaming behind her like a banner.

“Dr. Foster?” Sister Isabella was only slightly breathless and trying so hard to be correct.

“Sister, Nurse Mary was caught in the rain and she’s ill, she needs some assistance—would you fetch some tea and broth, bring the honeypot if you can find it, and then you can help Nurse Mary to her room?” he said.

“Oh yes, certainly, Dr. Foster. I’ll only be a few minutes, Nurse Mary, then I’ll help you get settled,” Sister Isabella replied, eager to help and seemingly charmed by the novelty of a female patient. Matron Brannan always said she was a gossip and maybe she was, maybe she was curious to see what Mary kept on her bedside table, if her nightdress was trimmed with ribbon or a narrow frill, but she had gentle hands and she could be quite convincing to boys who did not want to stay in their beds, ready to return to the front. 

The young nun wasted no time and walked away, down to the kitchen to prepare a tray first he supposed. He turned back to Mary who had closed her eyes. She was nearly asleep where she sat; could she even walk to her room or would he need to carry her? It was wrong of him, he knew it, but he wanted her too weak, too drowsy to climb the stairs. He wanted to pick her up in his arms and feel her head against his shoulder, the heat of her pressed to him, to let the dampness of her dress leach into his linen shirt where it might cool him. He wanted to look down at her face and see her regarding him with trust and affection. He wanted to see the relief that it was him who cared for her; he wanted her so at ease she would not think to thank him. 

She’d opened her eyes while he mused and was giving him such a thoughtful look. It was too much; Jed looked down and saw her muddy boots peeping out from her skirt.

“When Sister Isabella comes back, you’re to go straight up to bed, Mary, no disputation. I won’t have it. And you’re to stay in your bed tomorrow, we can’t risk that cough settling in your lungs,” he said firmly.

“But who will put away the things in the basket?” Mary asked, a little plaintive. She sounded very young with the hint of a whining child in her voice.

“I will do it,” he started but she interrupted, her voice raw from coughing but still resolute.

“No, not you, you cannot.” She would work herself into a tizzy if he argued with her.

“I shall ask Samuel Diggs then, I believe you’d trust him with anything and he knows just how you like things put away, doesn’t he?” Jed declared, letting his voice wheedle at the end, just a little. She relaxed then and nodded. He knew he had made the right suggestion. He would let her keep the secrets of her basket, her afternoon of errands; she shared enough, more than she knew perhaps, with her lovely dark eyes, the way she held her mouth.

“I shall come check on you a little later, after Sister Isabella has tucked you up,” he declared. He could let the nun play chaperone at the door, but he would see Mary was settled for the night properly, might dose her with willow bark if her fever rose.

“You needn’t, but I suppose you’ll do just as you please, Jedediah,” Mary replied.

He thought of how he would have to stay at the threshold when she lay in her white bed, another dark shawl covering her shoulders, the open neck of her nightdress. Her plait would be lost against the drab wool, only the twist of red ribbon at its end visible. He would have to stand there and send Sister Isabella with the dose, the nun’s hand against Mary’s neck, raising her to swallow. He would have to shut the door as Mary turned on her side and closed her eyes, slipping a hand beneath the pillow.

What he needed—to lie beside her in the night, to listen for her cough and let the count of her heartbeat collect in his palm where it rested against her breast. To reach for the cup of water and hold it to her mouth, brushing back the loose hair around her face, one long curl winding around his finger. To measure her fever with his own body and soothe her with a murmur if she grew restless. To smell the honey on her mouth more than the bitter willow, the rosewater she rinsed through her hair mingled with the November rain. There would be none of these, only Sister Isabella tilting her head to suggest he might go and Mary’s soft, “Good night, Dr. Foster.”

“Not quite, Mary. Not quite as I please, as I must,” he said somberly. That was enough honesty for the night.

“Just so,” she agreed and then she was quiet, her breath a little strained as they waited together for Sister Isabella’s return with hot tea and propriety.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been entertaining myself with imagining how many trope/cliches I could work into a romantic little Phoster story while trying to reclaim them realistically and thus, this story was born. Who doesn't love a dark and stormy night, having to get out of those wet clothes and the whirlwind of anxiety hurt/comfort can provide? In the mean time, I also wanted to give a little taste of the other relationships fanon is supporting-- Mary and Samuels' friendship, Jed's chess matches with Henry Hopkins, what a good replacement McBurney is and how Jed likes him. And of course, Byron the boor/boar.
> 
> The title is from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
> 
> Elecampane and licorice are used in herbal medicine to treat cough.
> 
> In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.
> 
> And of course, for the detail-oriented, there was a little Harry Potter snuck into this, just a very little...


End file.
